Sookoon Ang, Your love is like a chunk of gold (rose), 2010
Courtesy of the artist

Si la foudre tombait sur les lieux bas

Past: April 8 → 16, 2011

Pascal’s 39th Pensée makes the following bold claim: “If lightning fell on low places, etc., poets, and those who can only reason about things of that kind, would lack proofs.” This comes in the context of his ongoing contemplations concerning the differences between “mathematical” and “artistic” reasoning. Thus Pascal seems to be suggesting that more mathematical minds might be better suited to having such “proofs”. But what could proofs concerning lightning (on low or any other places) possibly be? And why should one sort of mind be better at it than another?

This beguiling claim and the questions it provokes serve as a loose atmosphere for the presentation of seven emerging artists primarily based in New York City. If lightning fell on low places, strange cities would emerge, diamond would transform into wood, bread would sprout crystals and all around (if only for an instant) the imagination would gain priority over the understanding. What the poets lacks in proofs, they gain in intuition, and the sculptures, paintings, prints and photographs presented here are themselves evidence of the central importance of the ineffable, unprovable, and unconscious in an evermore quantified world. The soft but dangerous light of flame is entirely appropriate for the contemplative, compelling and mysterious work of these artists, all of whom are showing in Paris for the first time.